Power-on auto-provisioning (POAP) is a feature by which a new switch automatically configures itself on boot-up without manual intervention from a network administrator (sometimes also referred to as “touchless day-0 device bring-up”). However, this assumes that a DHCP (dynamic host configuration protocol) server and an FTP (transfer protocol) or TFTP (trivial file transfer protocol) server are reachable by the new switch that is coming up.
In a VXLAN-EVPN (virtual extensible local area network/Ethernet virtual private network) based programmable fabric deployment, it is important that day-0 bring-up of nodes (e.g., either leaf or spine nodes) is handled in an automated way. While traditional provisioning via a mgmt0 interface (e.g., out-of-band) also works, many consumers prefer in-band POAP.
In a VXLAN-EVPN based programmable fabric deployment, to simplify Internet protocol (IP) address management on the underlay, the use of IP unnumbered interfaces is preferred where only one unique IP address per device is used to bring-up the routing table state between the various devices. All the core facing interfaces (e.g., fabric ports) on a device share this per device unique IP.
While the usage of IP unnumbered interfaces simplifies IP address management on the underlay, this complicates how DHCP relay functionality would work on the in-band interfaces since there is no longer a regular layer-3 interface under which a relay can be readily configured. And, without the DHCP relay functionality, in-band POAP does not operate properly.
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